


Bird Song

by Druddigonite



Series: Azula Week 2019 [2]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Azula Week, Azula Week 2019, Gen, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-17
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2020-06-29 21:37:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19838992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Druddigonite/pseuds/Druddigonite
Summary: Day 3 Prompt: Song As A PromptAzula’s control through fear was her highest exaltation, and it will be her greatest downfall.





	Bird Song

**Author's Note:**

> Based on [Bird Song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMlEMqJQVJ8) by Florence + The Machine.

**. Bird Song .**  
.  
.  
_Well I didn't tell anyone, but a bird flew by_  
.  
. 

There’s the faint scent of something burning in her room. It smells like the aftermath of Mommy and Daddy’s fights, but Daddy isn’t here and Mommy’s never here and it’s starting to get hard to breathe. When Azula opens her mouth to cough, a strong hand clamps on her mouth and shushes her. 

She’s wide awake now, struggles and kicks her legs at the scary shadow looming over her; it grabs her legs and arms and twists them into uncomfortable positions, the room rolls as she’s lifted before she finds it in herself to scream. She sees it make a ball of fire that lights the way, warm oranges and reds much like hers, but steadier. 

_Fire is the essence of power,_ she remembers Daddy telling her. _A stronger firebender’s flame will always overwhelm a weaker one’s._ He wants Azula to be the best. 

The stranger’s fire is a little flicker of life in his hand, warm and familiar, and she reaches for it the best she’s able with her hands behind her back, seizes it until it dances just for her. For a while it’s just her and the flame, ready to answer to her command. So she commands, and it flares up in joy. 

Dimly she hears the scream of a man she doesn’t know before she is dropped and the world comes to its feet. The stranger is yelling very bad things that would get Azula a fierce mouth-washing with soap if she ever repeats them. He’s large and tall and angry, but now she sees his face twisted in pain and the skin burnt off his fingers and he becomes just another human. 

They’re in one of the secret tunnels, she vaguely remembers, one she had explored maybe a year ago and never came back to because the air was dusty there were too many spider-moths. Her flame friend finally winks out so she generates another one, casting long shadows against the man’s face. 

More footsteps arrive, and Azula finds herself separated from the man by a circle of royal guards, all shouting at him to stand down. 

Next come Mommy and Daddy. Mommy throws her arms around her and holds her in a way she rarely does to her but often to Zuko, and she starts feeling safe again. Her father sweeps in with utmost regality, and the man starts snarling insults at him. Azula tries to hear but Mommy covers her ears and hums a song about leaves and vines. 

“You’ve condemned my brothers and sisters to die in petty conquests, your factories have polluted and starved my village, and all for what? Glory? Your lower classes die for some fucking twisted sense of duty, just so you have a little more coin to line your coffers! You’re a bastard of no morals, a disgraced descendant of Agni!” 

Daddy gives no reaction, but Azula can see the muscles in his neck tense up like how they do when he’s about to hit Mommy. Calling someone a disgraced descendant of Agni is a very grave insult, even more so on the royal family, who are the direct children of Agni. But like a good ruler, he waits for his subjects to speak their fill even though none of their words are important, so it’s only when the man is silent and breathing hard that he speaks. 

“Is that why you decided to kidnap my daughter?”

The man glares up at him, eyes dark with anger. “I am going to take away someone you love, just like you’ve done to me and several million other families out there.” 

Mommy pulls Azula in closer until it gets hard to breathe, and in the background she hears Daddy laughing quietly. 

“You break into the royal palace and kidnap my daughter for a few dead people? Not the healthiest coping mechanism, I must say.” Daddy has a way of speaking as if he’s breathing flames not words, and right the air seems to heat up as he continues. “You have committed a serious act of treason. Since you are the coward to steal a five-year-old girl instead of confronting me, I’ll let my daughter decide your fate.” 

“Azula,” she hears Daddy call, and snaps to attention. Does he want her to do something? Daddy still looks really angry, and she hopes that he’ll throw his anger at the man instead of at her. “By law, what is the punishment for treason?” 

The answer comes naturally; Daddy always drills her on Fire Nation laws at the dinner table. “All actions made with the intention to oppose Agni’s Children or his Nation are ordained as treason; peoples who have committed treasonous acts are subject to death by execution.”

Daddy smiles at her in pride, and she smiles back. Mommy’s face dawns into an expression of horror. “Precisely. It is the duty of the royal family to oversee such an execution. You are the judge, Azula—how should he be punished?” 

Mommy’s grip is strangling on her wrist. “Be reasonable, sweetie. Don’t do something you don’t want to be done to you.” It is just like Mommy, to ignore her daughter until she wants something from her. This time Azula is unwilling to give. 

She yanks her arm free. “Start firebending,” she commands to the man with all the authority her child’s voice can carry, not realising it is the soldier’s swords that make him rush to obey. She then takes his fire and makes it hers—this time the man notices and the fear on his face surprises her. He is making that face because of _her_. She flicks her wrist in a maneuver that she just learned and still feels clumsy in her child’s hands, but this time she pulls it off and the flame twists, turns like a living being before swallowing the man whole. 

That night, Azula learns control. 

Daddy praises her authority and prowess, something he almost never does, and she takes it and puts it with the rest of her happy memories (like when she and Zuko played hide and seek in the palace tunnels before Grampa sealed them off, or—oh!—their vacation at Ember Island). He says she did the right thing. Mommy doesn’t say anything, just storms out of the tunnels like thunder. Why isn’t Mommy proud of her? 

She shoots an apologetic look at Daddy and the cleanup crew before following Mother. They make it all the way to her bedroom before Mommy turns around. 

“What?” she hisses, almost feral, and Azula shrinks a little. The smell of burnt flesh lingers on both their clothes. 

“Are you proud of me?”

“For what? For my daughter cooking a man alive with his own flame?” Mommy laughs, but not in a happy way, more in a voice hitching, about to cry or scream kind of way. Before Azula does anything, her voice hardens. “Go back to your room Azula. You must be tired after all that firebending.” 

She is, but there’s something about the kidnapping that convinces her she won’t get a wink of sleep in her own bed. “Can I stay in your room? I’m scared.” _Zuko tells me that whenever he has a nightmare, you let him stay on your bed._

Suddenly Mommy’s stepping towards her; she opens her arms expecting to be carried but she’s shoving her, pushing her backwards until she’s tripping out onto the doorstep with a soft cry of pain. Ursa slides the panel door until there’s a tiny slit between them. “Go to sleep, sweetie. Monsters aren’t afraid of the dark.” 

.  
.  
_Saw what I'd done he set up a nest outside,_  
_And he sang about what I'd become_  
_He sang so loud, sang so clear_  
_I was afraid all the neighbours would hear,_  
.  
.

Her mother hated her. Her mother called her a monster.

Her mother was a coward, she thinks bitterly, a coward who wept over wounded turtleducks and war casualties, who left without even saying goodbye. Maybe she was right, maybe Azula is an evil, evil monster, so vicious and twisted that her mother couldn’t love her, but the least she could do was turn around and _face her_.

Not that she wants to see her disappointed face one last time. 

Ever since Azula was born Ursa slept in a separate room from her husband, the one opposite of the master bedroom reserved for concubines, staffed by servants that reported her every move. It’s been a week since she graced this bed, but the sheets haven’t been changed since and they smell of her as if she never left. Their scent sends a stab of emotion to Azula’s chest, more painful than Father’s punishments when she messes up her katas, and she is stunned by the ferocity of it all. 

It’s a foreign feeling. Azula tries to put a name to it, picking up the side of the silken bedsheet even as her heart seizes, eventually settling on hatred, though not quite. 

She grins as her blue flickers around the edges, red sheets curling black against the head, and she has to be careful because the whole room was made out of wood, but if nothing Azula prided herself on her control. Little filigrees of smoke, weaving through the air. Blue and red, blue and red. 

Black. 

She stumbles back, breathless and trembling. The room is hazy with smoke, ashes upon ashes, and the little candle inside her splutters out. She should’ve known, her mother was no phoenix.

She hears him before she sees, him, stumbling against the corridors, like a fledgling hawk with its wing cut off—and believe her, she’s known from experience—all hacking coughs and smolder. “Azula,” he shouts through a hoarse throat, “What are you doing?”

“Cleaning,” she says with a cutting smile, making her way to the bedside drawer. 

Zuko snarls quietly. He’s livid, but both know better than to allow their father to find out. 

Now that she has his attention, Azula picks up the memento in her hand, palms it; the thing fits nicely in her hand, but its ashes will fit even better. Wooden oni masks are so, so flammable. 

She sees Zuko tense out of the corner of her eye. “Don’t you dare,” he hisses. 

_Such petty sentimentality._ Like mother, like son, she supposes. It’s only fitting that he took after his coddler, getting all attached and protective over such a useless object, shrinking like a beaten dog whenever Father raises a hand. It wouldn’t be surprising if he turns tail and runs from his duties when he’s older. 

“Or what?” There’s something in the glee of the moment that takes her smile, stretches it so wide it hurts, the mask clenched in her hand trembling imperceptibly. “Or what, you’ll call mother? “

_Mother left us. Don’t you remember, Zuzu? She was a coward._

“You’re sadistic!” he snaps back, “Evil! Broken!” She’s skilled enough in reading people to see that’s he’s desperate, that she’s struck a nerve, and now he’s blindly throwing jabs in the hopes one of them sticks. She goads him and he eats it up, like a puppet on invisible strings. The puppetmaster allows the chi to surge through her fingertips, sets the room alight in a blur of red then blue then black. More ashes drift down into the carpet. 

Silence hangs like smoke in the air.

Zuko steps back, the air between them electric with tension. 

“Mother never loved you,” he says, his voice quivering yet resolute, and leaves without another word. 

Her chest feels tight, like there was a platypus-bear settled on her chest and her lungs forgot to breathe. Burning her mother’s belongings has lost its intrigue now that there was no one to taunt, so Azula stole out of the graveyard, noting the smoke lingering through the hallways. It’s only a matter of time before Father finds out, she realizes. She dusts clinging ashes off her clothes and wonders who casts the blame first.

(Azula does, in the end. When their Father beats Zuko black and blue, sends him crawling to bed without dinner, Azula laughs because she doesn’t know what else to do.)

.  
.  
_So I invited him in, just to reason with him_  
_I promised I wouldn't do it again_  
_But he sang louder and louder inside the house,_  
_And no I couldn't get him out_  
.  
.

Mai covets her knives like secrets, steel-edged kunai and shurikens and needle-blades. Azula had given her several on her fourteenth birthday, an old set made from carved dragonscale, light and durable, and watched them disappear into the fold of her sleeves. Nobody knows how many she owns (she’s counted at least forty-two once, during sparring practice) but she cares and sharpens them all to pinpoint precision. 

She hones her skill like blades. They are her defense, her redemption, her identity, and she hones them relentlessly until the trees around her house are more hole than tree and her fingers are worn to bloody stumps, nails clipped against harsh metal. Azula remembers seeing her etched with shallow cuts across her face and arms, back when she first started; now, the only scars she bears are the ones inside. 

Ty Lee, the youngest of her septuplets, never gets any attention from her parents. It’s a kind of freedom that has gotten into her head. She is flighty, flirts with death as if it were her partner, leaps up to catch passing hopes and dreams knowing nobody would catch her if she falls. And she’s fallen. A lot. 

She has the most broken bones out of all of them. Her left leg’s been fractured in five places, her right leg even more. Once, when they were little, Azula found her sprawled on the stone courtyard below her second story room, red cascading out of her cracked skull like a fountain. Ty Lee looked up at her beneath the blood running down her face and grinned, all wild glee on bloodstained teeth. Those concussions must’ve gotten to her head, because she’s the only one of them that never grew up. 

Azula never talks about her training with Father. 

There are rumors, whispers amid nobles and peasants alike. The assassin, a child who beat a Yu Yan in a sharpshooting match, who would be recruited to the military a hundred times over if she weren’t a noble’s daughter. The acrobat, who can take master firebenders in the blink of a second, who steals one’s chi right out of their body with a simple prod of her fingers. The princess, the favored heir who mastered her firebending at the ripe age of eleven, the youngest in firebending history. The princess, who burns a blue like no other and breathes lightning. Precocious, they say. Natural prodigies.

Azula scoffs at the notion. If they are prodigies, they’re ones born of blood and sweat, wounds and burns and breaks. Talent is earned, not given. Her father has said that with great power comes great sacrifice. 

On the days where Father is too busy with meetings to train Azula, she strings Ty Lee and Mai along to practice near the palace. The courtyard is a blur of movement, the low hiss of flame followed by the _twang_ of knife hitting tree. Ty Lee dodges Azula’s fire dagger and manages to get away as she pulls back to block an oncoming blade. Mai calmly evades her ensuing bout of flames, but is stalled as Ty Lee feints and comes up behind her. 

When they’re finished, they catch their breath on the banks of the turtleduck pond (which is nothing but clear water and koi now—she’s taken care of the little flock of problems a long time ago) and talk about everything and nothing. Azula enjoys the mundanity of it all, even when the conversation is more akin to a field of landmines than anything casual. 

“We’re leaving.” Mai breaks the silence with a bombshell. “Today.”

Her words snap Azula out of the lull of midmorning. She stares at Mai in a moment of weakness, then, seeing the other girl regard her with raised eyebrows, killed the emotion on her face. 

This is a mistake. It has to be.

 _Your father is a political asset to our nation’s council and he would be foolish to discard a chance to be in the Fire Lord’s good graces_ would be the pragmatic response. _I know ways to secure political positions for your entire family, to get bills passed that will be beneficial for your party, right under the council’s noses_ would be the bribery. _I’ll tell them all about how you were the one to spill the sacred braziers in the Fire Temple, not me_ would be the blackmail. _After all I did for you and Zuko_ would work wonders to Mai’s (muted) sense of shame. 

_Friends don’t leave each other like this_ would be too close to the truth. 

“You’re lying,” she ends up saying, “You can’t possibly.”

Mai sighs, as if steeling herself. Azula spies a flash of silver peek out from silk as she fingers her knives. She opens her mouth—

—And Ty Lee leaps in for the shockwave. “We’re both leaving.” She sounds almost apologetic, and for a second Azula even believes her. “Mai’s father was appointed mayor of some Earth Kingdom town a fortnight ago, and I want to run away and join the traveling circus that’s been around town lately. It’s not like my parents care where I am, and I want to be somewhere where I’m not part of some matched set.”

“You aren’t part of a matched set with me.”

Ty Lee sets her jaw. “Yes, but ever since Zuko left you’ve been so busy with training and war meetings and everything under Agni! This is the first time we met in about a month!” 

“So you and Mai decided to leave. And nobody thought to tell me this until now.” Azula says quietly.

Ty Lee averts her eyes. Looks to the pond, as if peering at ghosts of turtleducks. “I’m sorry.” 

Azula is the princess of the Fire Nation, heir to the throne. She’s played political pawns against each other like pieces on a chessboard, helped orchestrate successful military maneuvers in the Earth Kingdom; later on, she would be the one responsible for the death of the Avatar and the fall of the Impenetrable City. She is a prodigy, feared and revered, always the helm of power, always the grip of control. Yet she is not good enough to keep these two girls from _leaving her_. 

“I thought we were friends,” she hears someone say in her voice. 

“We still are,” Mai cuts in, though softer now, the defiant set of her jaw melting away. Azula hates how much it hurts her. “We’ll never stop.” 

_(Years later, on the metal deck of a once inescapable prison, she’ll say “I love Zuko more than I fear you” and shred her promise into pieces.)_

“We’ll always be by your side, ‘Zula. Just farther away.” Ty Lee hugs her with hours, days of pent-up anxiety and frustration. When they separate, it is a goodbye in and of itself. 

_(On that same deck, she’ll break her companion’s trust and sanity in one fell swoop.)_

“I’m not a coward. I don’t need anybody at my side.” Gritting her teeth—she’s been slacking on the threats, they should love her more—Azula abruptly shoves off Ty Lee’s concerned arm and heads back to the palace. 

With every step, she is alone. 

.  
.  
_I picked up the bird and above the din I said_  
_That's the last song you'll ever sing_  
_Held him down, broke his neck,_  
_Taught him a lesson he wouldn't forget_  
.  
.

From the safety of the tavern window, Azula watches Zuko cry over his uncle. 

Or not. She can’t really tell from there she is, but she can sure hear it, and, if his plaintive cries are any indication, little Zuzu is distressed. 

She allows herself a thin-lipped smile. Three years in exile have weathered her brother just as three years alone in the palace have intensified her, and yet he bears the same faults like a scar. And Azula knows those weaknesses, those fears, knows they are not of his flesh and bone but of the people around him. Her fuddy-duddy tea-loving hooligan of an uncle needed to go down anyways, so it was a two-birds-one-stone kind of deal. 

Wind whistles through the ghost town, making Azula shut her eyes to block stray sand. When she opens them again, Zuko is clumsily supporting Iroh, and one of the tribe peasants—Katara, she vaguely recalls—is stepping forward with one hand on her water pouch. Azula tenses, expecting a flash of ice and blood, but none comes. Instead, Katara kneels by the two, as if to heal. 

Stomach roiling, she turns away and leaves before she can watch the rest of their exchange. The crown princess has places to be, namely finding the whereabouts of her two allies. 

As she mounted her mongoose dragon, however, Azula's mind wanders back toward the ghost town gathering. 

It wasn’t like she held any attachment for uncle. The old man was always away on war campaigns, or, after Azulon died, a ghost in the palace. She felt immense satisfaction when the lightning left her fingertips and struck him square on the chest. He was a traitor to the crown, and his death was as good as guaranteed.

Azula doesn’t make mistakes, after all. 

_Uncle was a coward._ A shell of former glory days, the taste of sweetness gone sour. He’s lost his son and she her mother, he turns tail to the enemy while she’s still standing. Father’s said that Azula is already better than his brother (there seemed to be a disappointment sibling every generation, it seems) could ever hope to be, and yet in his dying throes he’s surrounded by his nephew and the Avatar’s friends, while Azula flees alone. 

_The waterbending peasant offered to heal him._

Why? If her sources are right, she is the last waterbender of the Southern Tribes after an (apparently unsuccessful) string of cullings. Someone of that background would harbor intense animosity toward a figure of her enemies, descended from the man who ordered the cullings in the first place. And yet Azula saw her kneeling down toward her uncle, hand extended, a gesture of peace in the midst of war. 

What did Iroh have that Azula didn’t? What virtue did a disgraced traitor possess that the Crown Princess lacked, that made Zuko follow him like a puppydog and the waterbender extend a healing hand? A true ruler knows that loyalty is won with fear and influence; Iroh lacked both. 

The Princess snarls silently, guiding her mount with sharp jerks toward the scene of a scuffle near the river. Mai and Ty Lee are on the banks, suspiciously damp but not too worse for wear. 

“Nice of you to swing by,” Mai says dryly, collecting her knives from where they’re lodged into trees. 

Azula ignores her. “We lost.” She is sore and tired all over, but keeps perfect posture as she settles on a jutting rock. “I expected the Avatar to be there, but then...” She chews on her cheek, suddenly ashamed. She’d miscalculated, something she’s never supposed to do. To fully admit she overlooked something, could overlook something, would be a weakness. 

“But then…?” Ty Lee, never the one for boundaries, edges her on. Out of the corner of her eye she sees Mai look up too. 

“It’s nothing much. He went into the Avatar State and I couldn’t fend him off.” Better to appear she met a powerful spirit head-on than to confess she fled from her own brother and uncle. She’s sure Mai still has a soft spot for him, and Ty Lee would cry if she knew Azula killed Iroh. 

Ty Lee wilted. “Aww, that’s too bad.” She hesitates, somehow managing to fidget through a handstand. “Sorry we couldn’t manage to stall them. Mai and I had it all under control until a huge furry thing came and slapped us into the river!” 

Azula waves a hand in dismissal. “Apology accepted.” It wouldn’t do to reprimand the two when she herself had failed. “I expect both of you to analyse your battle and see what went wrong, as well as what you can do better next time. Once you’re done picking up everything, Mai, we’re setting off. There’s a military base not far from here.” 

She returns to her mount. The river gurgles softly in the ensuing silence and she fiddles with her reins, suddenly contemplative. “Hey, if we happen to be fighting the Avatar and I got struck by lightning, would you drop everything to help me?”

“Yes!” Ty Lee jumps enthusiastically at the question. Azula spies her knuckles purpling in an angry bruise and looks away. She has always been eager to serve. “You’re one of the most important people in the nation, Azula, and I’d follow you anywhere.” 

Her words are flattering, but not what she’s looking for. Azula turns to the Mai. “And you?” 

Mai raises her eyebrows. Her mouth is set hard on the edges, as if she’s deciding whether she’d be better off bored at home or bored with Azula. “Honestly, Azula, this is redundant. I expect the Princess to avoid being struck by lightning in the first place.” 

They are both right; she is here to serve her nation to the best of her ability, not ponder on some twisted sense of dependability. As long as she abides by her father’s lessons and keeps control on her subjects and cuts out the loose ends that threaten to hurt her, she won’t ever need anybody to fall back on. 

Azula doesn’t fall. 

The trio arrive at the base by sunset. Azula settles into her sleeping bag and dreams of the long way down.

.  
.  
_But in my dreams began to creep_  
_That old familiar tweet tweet tweet_  
_I opened my mouth to scream and shout,_  
_I waved my arms and flapped about_  
.  
. 

.  


She’s seeing blue as she skids across the battlefield, sparks fizzling out like fireflies around her. Zuzu’s standing steady above her—he’s changed, a stranger, they all were—there’s blood in her mouth, roaring in her ears, yet her normally clear mind’s lost to the foggy haze of betrayal. She’s slipping, and he knows it.

Azula tries to get to her feet.

The air buzzes with a taunt and she’s slipping, slipping, bares her teeth (I’ll show you lightning!) and feels the snap of ozone as her sanity lances past her fingertips. She aims it away from Zuzu and at the water tribe peasant, watches the split-second expression of fear in her eyes, and laughs to forget the tears in hers. _That’s the last song you’ll ever sing._

In the end, she miscalculated; Zuko loved Katara than he feared Azula. 

Her control through fear was her highest exaltation; now it is her greatest downfall. 

She’s five years old again, this time bound in metal-link chains, tear tracks burning down her face and her mother’s heavy disapproval laid across her shoulders. Sozin's Comet steaks like a dragon across the sky, a testament to her failure. In the end, Azula is weak. From the beginning, she was alone. 

Azula cries because she doesn’t know what else to do. 

.  
.  
_But I couldn't scream I couldn't shout,_  
_The song was coming from my mouth_  
_The song was coming from my mouth_  
.  
.


End file.
